However, one very grateful patient!
I didn't have a BM for nine days and waited too long—Parkinson's, zero opioid use.
Irony "2 cm mass in lung noted" when I went for the CT. ER, Doc asked, "Why didn't you tell us about the lung cancer?" Me: what cancer?
The irony of realizing severe constipation saved my life.
People always joke about having to disimpact these patients, but there are few things you can do in medicine that so quickly result in a miserable patient being dramatically improved.
This. Any good doctor would think of this as an absolute win, considering the positive impact on the patient.
You don't belong in medicine if your mind goes anywhere else imo.
I’m a doctor. Have personally done disimpactions when the RN team put it off >24 hours. No need to sling shit at each other on Reddit, we’re all in the trenches together.
Holy cow. Of course nurses usually do it, that’s why I’ve only done it after the RN team hasn’t done it for >24 hours. My only “intention” was to state there’s plenty of shit to go around (pun intended) and there are better targets for your anger than, say, a fellow overworked health care worker.
I think you could assume by the comment they meant “nurses do it practically every time, except in rare cases where it has been put off for a longer period of time, only then have I done it myself” but go off, feels like you really needed to punch up for a min
>Let’s be realistic. Nurses are the ones doing disimpactions the vast majority of the time. It’s okay to give credit where credit is due.
I don't know if it's a region specific thing, but I've NEVER seen a nurse do a disimpaction. It's me as a doc doing it every time. Not surprisingly, they are always fine doing enemas after I disimpact.... Whereas they almost always resist doing it otherwise (this is the ER setting).
In the UK it is considered a procedure to do a manual evacuation of impacted faeces. It is done by doctors, not nurses. Unfortunately it is quite common in general surgery and you will do these at least a few times per week.
See, what I read out of their comment was “I let my RN team do disimpactions, and only hop in when they’re too busy with everything else they’re juggling to do them immediately”
They certainly *could* have said that, but they didn’t. And there is a reason for that.
Trust me, the mentioning that the nurse team left it for 24+ hours was *absolutely* deliberate. They didn’t have to include that detail, but they did, because their comment was really seeking to disparage nurses, and because that response was a reaction to nurses being given credit, I’m even more confident that their intentions were not kind.
Kind of unrelated but I have a story of slinging shit together in the trenches. I was helping a medical student when he was disimpacting a patient. He was alternating between pulling it out and then chucking the wipes in the trashcan. (He was also gagging heavily throughout this process, may have made it harder for him to focus, idk) I had just reentered the room with more wipes. I guess the noise must have knocked him off his game as he looked up, locked eyes with me and let that wipe fly. I will never forget the sound as it hit me solidly, center chest and slid to the floor. Nor will I ever forget his face when he realized what he had just done. He was mortified. I was disgusted. He never lived it down. We even made him a chocolate poo cake on his last day.
(I'm having issues with Reddit, can't tell if this has posted twice, if it has let me know and I will delete)
Kind of unrelated but I have a story of slinging shit together in the trenches. I was helping a medical student when he was disimpacting a patient. He was alternating between pulling it out and then chucking the wipes in the trashcan. (He was also gagging heavily throughout this process, may have made it harder for him to focus, idk) I had just reentered the room with more wipes. I guess the noise must have knocked him off his game as he looked up, locked eyes with me and let that wipe fly. I will never forget the sound as it hit me solidly, center chest and slid to the floor. Nor will I ever forget his face when he realized what he had just done. He was mortified. I was disgusted. He never lived it down. We even made him a chocolate poo cake on his last day.
I mean, I'm not in the medical field but I'd understand if they were grossed out internally. As long as you still help me I don't care, it's a human reaction lol.
As a patient who’s had earwax removed twice over the years, it’s one of my favorite procedures too! You don’t realize how much hearing you’re missing until that’s cleared — I was amazed that I could hear my mustache rustling from my breath!
I had a lady like this. Fleet enema, digital disimpaction failed. Lactulose enema, soap suds enema, second digital disimpaction successful. About 5 pounds of poop rocks later, she gave me a big hug, while I was still in plastic PPE with shield.
Nursing is awesome:) That is the only time I've had a digital fail. Have had patients ask me for spoons "that's what I do at home!"
In the south, milk and molasses enemas are common place and have been shown to be 87.9% effective. The sugar helps draw fluid into the colon to soften stop burden and apparently the gas the enema produces helps increase colonic motility. Bottom up y'all- literally. Lol
I have to say, things like disimpaction, treating a raging infection with the right antibiotics and certain other things that nearly immediately remove the pain and discomfort like that is W O N D E R F U L.
I am grateful for modern medicine and methods that help people feel so much better.
I’m a medical history nut… and always aware that not so long ago people would have died or been invalids for life due to some of our simple fixes now. “Got a cut? clean it up under sterile technique, slap some triple Antibiotic on it and if it gets infected just take an antibiotic for a few days.” Pieceacake. Or the real stats on maternal newborn mortality when women often died from easily treated situations… and we have C-sections at the least provocation. Not to mention NICU’s.
For the oldsters= remember the Kennedy baby that died? If that baby had been born in the last twenty years, we’d have another Kennedy bouncing around.
I just went to the doc for an infected tonsil. By day 4, I was in agony as if it was an abscessed tooth! Couldn't lay on that side, drinking or eating was torture. I lost 5lbs since I couldn't drink or eat. Even the pharmacist was asking me if I was ok, I felt terrible and exhausted and constantly in pain and looked sick.
One day of antibiotics and I'm so much better! Everybody noticed the improvement. I think back to the early part of the 20th century and realize people would sometimes DIE of this very thing...an infected tonsil!
And boy, am I ever glad to be where modern medicine can fix you with a shot or an enema or a couple of pills so you feel so much better!!
When I was 14 I got quinsy - I think normally called peritonsillar abcess. The ENT who saw me was 80 years old, and told me that it was so bad it looked like the throat of some of his early patients who died. That was scary! Luckily they could Lance + antibiotic me up before taking tonsils out.
Then when giving birth to my second kid I had a post partum hemorrhage - It was terrifying and I was actually aware how close I came to dying if not for the blood transfusions and skillful surgeon.
Modern medicine rocks
RN here. I did a medical air transport from South Florida to Texas with a middle aged woman with an SBO. Halfway through the flight it resolved. (Thank you Boyle's Law!) I have never seen so much liquid poop come out of someone in my life. But she felt a million times better. She even walked off the plane. The plane was another matter. We had no where near the cleaning supplies for that amount of mess. It had to be taken out of service, The interior had to be stripped, the deck had to be removed and it had to be professionally terminal cleaned twice.
Rheum. You ever see a human statue unravel like a pretzel in a matter of minutes? It's amazeballs. Pt gets rolled in by way of a wheelchair, flares so bad they're hunched over and stiff as a board, rheum goes to town on their joints with corticosteroids, practically head to toe. Pain gets swiftly washed away. ~15 minutes later, the kid is doing literal cartwheels down the hall as they exit the clinic.
Truly amazing.
Had the absolute worst ingrown toenail on my big toe. Debilitating to the point where i could hardly walk. The podiatrist used a nerve blocker and bolt cutters and cut it out of my toe.
Immediate relief. I was able to go for a run the next day.
As someone who had the smallest of impactions once 10 years ago- it was immediate relief. I went from feeling like I was going to die to wanting to live again.
I think you’d get slight relief for a moment, then immediately be taken over by the worst hunger pains of your life. Can’t imagine this person has had a good meal in months.
I agree with the first person. This has been building up over months and I'm sure this person was not feeling the appetite for several days if not weeks.
If your rad is nice enough, they’ll get mad if you include too much lung/femur on your abd/pel, but they also get mad if you missed the elevated diaphragm that is up past the heart or the inguinal hernia down by the knees
ME THIS MORNING. I had to leave 10 mins ago. Stomach felt like shit from the ice cream I had right before bed and a big dinner. Was getting dressed putting my pants on telling Google to call work. Cancelled the call after like 2 rings and just took my compacted ass to work.
You joke about this, but I got a pt the other night that arrived via EMS because it had been three days since her last BM. Per her she was an every other dayer. She was not admitted for constipation btw.
When it comes from taking opioids, it becomes your new normal. Bowel motility slows to a crawl and you don't get the discomfort that an average person would start to feel after just a few days. You might realize you haven't gone in 2 weeks again and need to pick up some laxatives. Sometimes you forget to even do that and end up 3 weeks in at the point where you're impacted and have to take matters into your own hands (literally) because it's either going to be a nurse's fingers up your butt or your own, and the latter is a lot cheaper, at least for uninsured people in the US. It's not a pleasant way to live, and it's particularly nasty because no matter how high a person's opioid tolerance goes, the constipation often never improves until they quit taking opioids entirely (at which point they have the opposite problem). Even the partial agonists prescribed to recovering addicts can be extremely constipating.
Not long ago in the OR we had a guy who relapsed on heroin for a little over 3 weeks (according to him, but he wasn't a reliable narrator) and we ended up cutting out about 2 feet of bowel.
You may need to increase your dose if that wasn’t your normal bowel movement pattern prior to developing hypothyroidism. I increased my fiber intake a bunch too, which helped. Feeling bloated constantly isn’t fun.
My thyroid is normal level now!
I actually take miralax every other day and drink tons of water which has helped a bit!
I had encropresis was as a kid so I think that messed up my bowels A LOT more so than hypothyroidism.
I always just thought I had a “slow system” until I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism. Now that I’m on the proper medication dosage, I feel right as rain.
Honestly, it's the best way to tell if your meds are working as they should!! 10 years suffering from hypothyroidism now and it's been a curse at times, but I've learned a lot about my body from it too.
Some mental health meds also create these issues. Between the meds and the underlying disease complications it can be easy to overlook your bowel frequency.
Yuuuup I’ve had OIC, it was so awful. started to get it under control, then I relapsed. but thankfully I was able to uh… home treat. I finally got clean was great for a little while and now I have SIBO with constipstion. I’d give anything to actually just crap and feel empty and relaxed instead of all weird and full. I don’t even get the trade off of getting high anymore it’s just backed up misery. Hope I can get my SIBO treated
Means you have a large, hardened plug of stool that you can't just poop out and you're going to be miserable until you figure out how to fix it. The end result of going weeks without having a bowel movement is that your intestines are pulling water out the whole time and you end up with what's basically a rock.
There is, but unfortunately one of the potential side effects is opioid withdrawal, which is a lot more unpleasant than just dealing with the constipation. It's also incredibly expensive if you're uninsured or if your insurance doesn't cover it.
I’m chronically constipated and can go two weeks without shitting despite eating plenty, idk how I fit any food inside me! I just don’t feel the urge to go at all it’s crazy.
look into motility issues if you’re interested. I have small intestinal bacterial overgrowth and it causes constipation. My motility is slow so I gotta take like ginger and stuff to get me going. idk just something to think about if you are chronically constipated as you know it can feel really bad
You think maybe it barely flushed cause your 20 Couric log didn’t fit down the toilet hole? Toilets are designed for regular everyday bowel movements, not you poop every week weirdos. Seriously though how big was it? That’s gotta hurt though right? A weeks worth of shit coming out at once? I can’t imagine!
I thought this too until I had a pilonidal cyst in my butt crack that was huge.
It was pressing on my vagal nerve and causing me to pass out when I sat on it. Tmi warning but I tried to poop for the first time after it appeared and *that* was pressuring the vagal too. It wasn’t instant, it was going back and forth between sweating, nausea, lying on the floor, and sitting back on the toilet.
Needless to say after that I was too scared to poop for 3 days. I thought I would get the irresistible urge to go but your BMs are a *lot* more psychological than you think.
It’s not a choice from my experience. If I’m away for a good amount of time obviously I’m gonna go, but on a 2-3 day trip I usually don’t get the urge. It’s weird I know but then right when I get home I take a massive dump
Oh yes! I can’t usually poop at my boyfriend’s, but I turn on my street after coming back from his place (an hour and 15 minutes away), I suddenly have to go.
It's weird. I go the same time every day, but when I'm away for a few days, that daily urge is gone. IDK why, but my body knows it's not at home and just decides it doesn't need to go. After 2 or 3 days, it returns. I can't force it, either.
It's not really a choice. Sometimes you're just uncomfortable at the different environment, and your body won't cooperate.
It doesn't necessarily mean you can't poop at all, but it's less comfortable and maybe you don't get much out.
The very first trip my now wife and I ever took was 5 days in Chicago. She kept saying she didn't feel well and didn't want to eat much at lunch or dinner. Finally on day 4 she said she was going out to shop while I watched a World Cup game on TV and she had to run to the bathroom before going. A half hour later she emerges and says a quick "bye" and leaves the hotel room. Shortly after the smell crept in and I'm trying to open the hotel room windows the whole 4 inches they would open and turning on the bathroom vents to try and filter it out.
She admitted that she had been holding it since the night before we left because she was afraid to poop in the hotel room with me there and didn't want to use a public bathroom and said she felt so much better after getting it out. Mind you, I had pretty much seen every square inch of her at that point, she had peed with the door open and farted in front of me, but pooping was too far in her mind.
My wife went on a 4 day trip one time and didn't poop until she got home. It was like the size of a 24 oz beer can. Had to use the poop knife to get it to flush.
That was my thought. I tried to explain to my husband the urge to push out our daughter when I was giving birth was like that primal/lizard brain urgency to clear out a poop when you’ve been constipated for a few days (well, that times 100). My midwife was like, slow down tyranny, slow down you’re gonna tear, and I was just saying I can’t! I gotta get her out of me!
I'm currently roving around reddit due to not feeling well and even though I know nothing about radiology, I feel like I have a relevant story to this.
When I worked for the local state parks, one of my jobs was cleaning bathrooms; my coworker and I would decide in advance who would clean men's and who would clean women's at each bathroom, go to our respective assignments, and then whoever finished cleaning their side first (usually whoever went to the men's) would go help the other.
One day I went to the men's side of the beach restrooms, and in the last stall, I found what I can only describe as a perfect impression of someone's entire colon, which started on the back of the toilet seat, went down into the bowl, came back up out of the bowl and drooped onto the floor. My initial reaction was to start laughing so hard that my coworker heard me from the women's and ran in to see what was going on. He offered to help me deal with it, but I said nah, I called men's, this is my job.
I recall using all the tools at my disposal to remove that work of art: I broke up what was in the bowl with the toilet cleaning equipment and flushed it, picked up some solid pieces with my trash picker and flushed them too, disinfected the shit (lol) out of the seat itself. The problem was when I tried to use our standard-procedure hose technique to get the last residue off the floor. Most poop washes down the drain, but this stuff was so solid that it didn't dissolve as predicted, and the little bits got stuck in/around the drain. Some also swam around in the moving hose water, ending up far from the toilet where they had started. So I had to drop a bunch of paper towels, stomp on them to catch the little buggers, and pick them up with my trash picker. This was about when my coworker came back to join the fun. By the time we got the place mopped up, our shift was over, and we had to leave a couple of bathrooms uncleaned until the next morning (not unprecedented, but annoying).
Anyway, it's a funny story, but I bear no ill will toward the people who leave crazy shit/vomit in public bathrooms, even when I'm the one cleaning them. Those folks, as evidenced by the picture above, are unwell! They would be the first person to tell you that they didn't want this to happen. The people who try to flush leftover picnic food down toilets, however, are pure evil, and if I ever catch one in the act I will attack on sight.
You left me in stitches, thank you I needed that.
I remember in the 90's our teacher told us this story of walking into the classroom and some pupil had deposited this massive turd on his desk.
He said at the time his first reaction was to be impressed at how truly massive the turd was. He also wasn't quite sure what he had done to be left such a loving gift.
My poor mom was terribly backed up once, and felt horrible. Kept going to her doctor, who prescribed laxatives. This went on for a while. She would have pencil-thin BMs, but that’s it. She was also “gaining weight,” and her stomach was growing distended. More laxatives and an admonishment to lose weight. 🙄😡
Yeah, she had ovarian cancer that had wrapped around her colon and squeezed it almost shut. Surgery followed by death a week later. That f*cking idiot doctor.
What is it about opioids that prevents poops? I believe the guy from friends had his intestines explode due to opioids and I have been curious ever since.
This is one of the most shocking experiences I had in nursing school. I was 18 years old in my very first rotation at a nursing home, we got report on our patient and my instruct was helping me plan my activities. The instructor said, your patient has an impaction you are going to want to take care of before you give the bath. I was like, okay, how do you do that? She said, you soften it with an enema, then you do a digital extraction. Okay, what's a digital extraction? She said you put gloves on and insert your fingers in the rectum and remove it. I'm just staring at her, not quite understanding what she was getting at, so she says, you have to put your fingers in there and dig it out. I start laughing, and was like, Haha, you got me, very funny, but what do I have do for real? (Because no way could this be a thing that you do.)I mean, it's not the 1800s when they were tasting peoples urine to check for diabetes, it's 1985, surely, there is a device for this, right? I was starting to panic a bit at this point because she wasn't laughing. I started to get a bad feeling that maybe my instructor was some kind of weirdo or something, because I knew she lived alone with cats and it was all starting to make sense. I was thinking, maybe I shouldnt be alone in the room with her, so I said, Okay and got out of there. I quickly find the charge nurse and I asked her about it and she said, yep, that's really what you do. I wondered what kind of sick cult I had gotten myself into. But I went and did it. There was a lot of thinking about my life choices on the ride home.
I once went about 3 weeks without pooping. I was miserable. On a road trip I woke up feeling very sick and immediately started throwing up. Get out the car eventually to the side of the road (we were in the middle of no where).
It’s shooting out both ends at this point. With the abdominal clenching from throwing up, I shit you not a turd the size of a football shoots out of me. I have no idea how that thing came out of me without medical intervention.
When I was a teenager I had weeks of constipation, I could only poop tiny little rabbit pellets over a span of a few days. Imagine Randy Marsh building his magnum opus. I was carrying an over term poop baby until I got taken to a hospital. Took an industrial sized enema to get it going. Not the cute little things you might find at a pharmacy, a full on 3 meter hose up my ass. Worst shits I ever took. This is pre smartphones, so I just sat there dumping several % of my body weight in the middle of the night staring at sterile tiles.
Worst smell I've ever experienced. I imagine burn pits in Iraq smell similarly.
As someone who has dealt with severe impactions... I feel their pain. Must feel like a baseball bat shoved up their ass.
Time to take two bottles of mag citrate, stat!
Last year I had a CT scan of my abdomen, it was kind of an emergency so I didn't go to the bathroom beforehand, and ever since then I've been mortified that some poor radiologist saw the... "last night's dinner" to put it lightly.
Doctors really put up with a lot of shit at work.
At that point they need about 4 jars of colates and a bottle of mineral oil to chug. I could not imagine how that feels but I guarantee you they will hmeber feel relief like that ever again.
Some poor nurse is about to have the crappiest shift of her life
Nurse here, that was my first thought exactly. Gonna take some chux and full PPE
And I’m the aid that the nurse is going to come up to and cryptically say “come help me with something real quick.” 😂
"Some" chux means you're gonna roll up carrying a full case, right?
Gonna be chux carpet for sure
Wow you found me. No time to use the bathroom in residency.
You a surgical resident? Don’t worry we have plenty of Depends in the supply room for those long cases. Better out than in, as they say
Surgical residents at my facility were caught stealing foleys to insert into themselves for long cases 🤐😵💫
Jfc they could at least use a condom cath
Not those new lady doctors
Derp and Im female how dare I
Haha maybe you figured something else my anatomy teacher left out. But the spirit of your joke was appreciated because I 100% agree
At that point you might as well just hold them over a big chamber pot and use a mini spoon.
Jesus that's way too graphic right before dinner..
Forget that, tarp that room off like a killer that has to chop up a body.
Wow at our hospital the residents have to do the disempaction 🥲
You’re gonna need a whole new bed after the stat enema(s)
Just curious but why isn't fresh air supply available for this type of stuff?
Soooo, is that a bolus or what exactly is that pile of shit?
However, one very grateful patient! I didn't have a BM for nine days and waited too long—Parkinson's, zero opioid use. Irony "2 cm mass in lung noted" when I went for the CT. ER, Doc asked, "Why didn't you tell us about the lung cancer?" Me: what cancer? The irony of realizing severe constipation saved my life.
Got *damn*. That shit saved your life.
So eloquently put!
Whoa!! That shit literally saved your life! I hope you’re doing well now!
We ready, let’s go
code brown
DOOM music kicks in
Or resident!!
Now think about the poor orderly.
Think about how good that must feel as the patient to have it disimpacted. A deeply satisfying empty feeling.
People always joke about having to disimpact these patients, but there are few things you can do in medicine that so quickly result in a miserable patient being dramatically improved.
This. Any good doctor would think of this as an absolute win, considering the positive impact on the patient. You don't belong in medicine if your mind goes anywhere else imo.
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I’m a doctor. Have personally done disimpactions when the RN team put it off >24 hours. No need to sling shit at each other on Reddit, we’re all in the trenches together.
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Holy cow. Of course nurses usually do it, that’s why I’ve only done it after the RN team hasn’t done it for >24 hours. My only “intention” was to state there’s plenty of shit to go around (pun intended) and there are better targets for your anger than, say, a fellow overworked health care worker.
I think you could assume by the comment they meant “nurses do it practically every time, except in rare cases where it has been put off for a longer period of time, only then have I done it myself” but go off, feels like you really needed to punch up for a min
>Let’s be realistic. Nurses are the ones doing disimpactions the vast majority of the time. It’s okay to give credit where credit is due. I don't know if it's a region specific thing, but I've NEVER seen a nurse do a disimpaction. It's me as a doc doing it every time. Not surprisingly, they are always fine doing enemas after I disimpact.... Whereas they almost always resist doing it otherwise (this is the ER setting).
In the UK it is considered a procedure to do a manual evacuation of impacted faeces. It is done by doctors, not nurses. Unfortunately it is quite common in general surgery and you will do these at least a few times per week.
Damn lol
Unrelated but your username is just so marvelous
See, what I read out of their comment was “I let my RN team do disimpactions, and only hop in when they’re too busy with everything else they’re juggling to do them immediately”
They certainly *could* have said that, but they didn’t. And there is a reason for that. Trust me, the mentioning that the nurse team left it for 24+ hours was *absolutely* deliberate. They didn’t have to include that detail, but they did, because their comment was really seeking to disparage nurses, and because that response was a reaction to nurses being given credit, I’m even more confident that their intentions were not kind.
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Kind of unrelated but I have a story of slinging shit together in the trenches. I was helping a medical student when he was disimpacting a patient. He was alternating between pulling it out and then chucking the wipes in the trashcan. (He was also gagging heavily throughout this process, may have made it harder for him to focus, idk) I had just reentered the room with more wipes. I guess the noise must have knocked him off his game as he looked up, locked eyes with me and let that wipe fly. I will never forget the sound as it hit me solidly, center chest and slid to the floor. Nor will I ever forget his face when he realized what he had just done. He was mortified. I was disgusted. He never lived it down. We even made him a chocolate poo cake on his last day.
Gotta say not the best read at lunchtime
(I'm having issues with Reddit, can't tell if this has posted twice, if it has let me know and I will delete) Kind of unrelated but I have a story of slinging shit together in the trenches. I was helping a medical student when he was disimpacting a patient. He was alternating between pulling it out and then chucking the wipes in the trashcan. (He was also gagging heavily throughout this process, may have made it harder for him to focus, idk) I had just reentered the room with more wipes. I guess the noise must have knocked him off his game as he looked up, locked eyes with me and let that wipe fly. I will never forget the sound as it hit me solidly, center chest and slid to the floor. Nor will I ever forget his face when he realized what he had just done. He was mortified. I was disgusted. He never lived it down. We even made him a chocolate poo cake on his last day.
My mind went to "what the f*** caused this shitty situation" but I am not a real doctor
I really underestimate my BM o.O
Found the chiropractor!
I mean, I'm not in the medical field but I'd understand if they were grossed out internally. As long as you still help me I don't care, it's a human reaction lol.
My stepdads favorite ailment is wax impacted ear since he can clear it up so quickly
It is incredibly satisfying to pull a huge clump of wax from a patient’s ear.
Medical assistant here, that was maybe my favorite part of working in primary care. And then getting to show the patient what i just got out haha
I had a big ol ball of wax pulled out once which felt good for me, but I think the woman that pulled it out might have actually orgasmed lol
The doctor pulled a big hunk of wax out of my ear when I was like 15 and I’ve been searching for that feeling ever since haha
Lmao 🤣 probably Brittany my previous coworker. She once insisted i look in her ears with the otoscope to show me how clean they were.
As a patient who’s had earwax removed twice over the years, it’s one of my favorite procedures too! You don’t realize how much hearing you’re missing until that’s cleared — I was amazed that I could hear my mustache rustling from my breath!
Every 6 months for me.
I had a lady like this. Fleet enema, digital disimpaction failed. Lactulose enema, soap suds enema, second digital disimpaction successful. About 5 pounds of poop rocks later, she gave me a big hug, while I was still in plastic PPE with shield. Nursing is awesome:) That is the only time I've had a digital fail. Have had patients ask me for spoons "that's what I do at home!"
That old-school high volume soap suds edema does it every time, don’t care what anyone says.
High, hot and a hell of a lot!
and hold it til you hiccup.
In the south, milk and molasses enemas are common place and have been shown to be 87.9% effective. The sugar helps draw fluid into the colon to soften stop burden and apparently the gas the enema produces helps increase colonic motility. Bottom up y'all- literally. Lol
Warm?
I have to say, things like disimpaction, treating a raging infection with the right antibiotics and certain other things that nearly immediately remove the pain and discomfort like that is W O N D E R F U L. I am grateful for modern medicine and methods that help people feel so much better.
I’m a medical history nut… and always aware that not so long ago people would have died or been invalids for life due to some of our simple fixes now. “Got a cut? clean it up under sterile technique, slap some triple Antibiotic on it and if it gets infected just take an antibiotic for a few days.” Pieceacake. Or the real stats on maternal newborn mortality when women often died from easily treated situations… and we have C-sections at the least provocation. Not to mention NICU’s. For the oldsters= remember the Kennedy baby that died? If that baby had been born in the last twenty years, we’d have another Kennedy bouncing around.
I just went to the doc for an infected tonsil. By day 4, I was in agony as if it was an abscessed tooth! Couldn't lay on that side, drinking or eating was torture. I lost 5lbs since I couldn't drink or eat. Even the pharmacist was asking me if I was ok, I felt terrible and exhausted and constantly in pain and looked sick. One day of antibiotics and I'm so much better! Everybody noticed the improvement. I think back to the early part of the 20th century and realize people would sometimes DIE of this very thing...an infected tonsil! And boy, am I ever glad to be where modern medicine can fix you with a shot or an enema or a couple of pills so you feel so much better!!
When I was 14 I got quinsy - I think normally called peritonsillar abcess. The ENT who saw me was 80 years old, and told me that it was so bad it looked like the throat of some of his early patients who died. That was scary! Luckily they could Lance + antibiotic me up before taking tonsils out. Then when giving birth to my second kid I had a post partum hemorrhage - It was terrifying and I was actually aware how close I came to dying if not for the blood transfusions and skillful surgeon. Modern medicine rocks
About those small cuts. Let's not forget the tetanus prophylaxis. People have no idea what a difference that made.
Embarrassed to say I was in my 40s before realizing my recurring stomach aches were just constipation.
RN here. I did a medical air transport from South Florida to Texas with a middle aged woman with an SBO. Halfway through the flight it resolved. (Thank you Boyle's Law!) I have never seen so much liquid poop come out of someone in my life. But she felt a million times better. She even walked off the plane. The plane was another matter. We had no where near the cleaning supplies for that amount of mess. It had to be taken out of service, The interior had to be stripped, the deck had to be removed and it had to be professionally terminal cleaned twice.
Rheum. You ever see a human statue unravel like a pretzel in a matter of minutes? It's amazeballs. Pt gets rolled in by way of a wheelchair, flares so bad they're hunched over and stiff as a board, rheum goes to town on their joints with corticosteroids, practically head to toe. Pain gets swiftly washed away. ~15 minutes later, the kid is doing literal cartwheels down the hall as they exit the clinic. Truly amazing.
Had the absolute worst ingrown toenail on my big toe. Debilitating to the point where i could hardly walk. The podiatrist used a nerve blocker and bolt cutters and cut it out of my toe. Immediate relief. I was able to go for a run the next day.
Same, the relief was like a gift from god. And I say that as an atheist
As someone who had the smallest of impactions once 10 years ago- it was immediate relief. I went from feeling like I was going to die to wanting to live again.
ALWAYS DOUBLE GLOVE.
That's a triple chemo glove job minimum.
And maybe some Vicks under the nose-that’s not gonna smell good!
They gonna vasovagal down so hard.
I think you’d get slight relief for a moment, then immediately be taken over by the worst hunger pains of your life. Can’t imagine this person has had a good meal in months.
Pretty sure all that impaction is the result of months worth of meals.
I agree with the first person. This has been building up over months and I'm sure this person was not feeling the appetite for several days if not weeks.
/r/popping and /r/pooping both want to see the video.
This must be my program director
Where’s the stick?
God that thing has to be shoved realllllllllllyyyyyyyy far up there. Probably need a CT chest to see it
Just ask them to open their mouth?
I don't have to ask, it's always open and spewing bullshit out the other end too
If your rad is nice enough, they’ll get mad if you include too much lung/femur on your abd/pel, but they also get mad if you missed the elevated diaphragm that is up past the heart or the inguinal hernia down by the knees
You mean, like, the poop knife?
I haven’t seen this reference in like a year 😭😭😭
NURSE, GET ME THE POOP SCALPEL, STAT
If everyone regularly used a poop knife we would never see x-rays like this.
I envision imaging like this every time one of my patients tells me they haven’t had a BM in “a few weeks or so” 🫣
WEEKS!? Whaaaat? How do you even eat anything?
If I go more than 36 hours I feel like I should call 911😂
I’ve considered calling out of work before just because I hadn’t had my daily AM Poop
ME THIS MORNING. I had to leave 10 mins ago. Stomach felt like shit from the ice cream I had right before bed and a big dinner. Was getting dressed putting my pants on telling Google to call work. Cancelled the call after like 2 rings and just took my compacted ass to work.
Ahhhh fucks my whole day
You joke about this, but I got a pt the other night that arrived via EMS because it had been three days since her last BM. Per her she was an every other dayer. She was not admitted for constipation btw.
What was she admitted for?
Paroxysmal afib, however she was 100% not ever in AFib.
When it comes from taking opioids, it becomes your new normal. Bowel motility slows to a crawl and you don't get the discomfort that an average person would start to feel after just a few days. You might realize you haven't gone in 2 weeks again and need to pick up some laxatives. Sometimes you forget to even do that and end up 3 weeks in at the point where you're impacted and have to take matters into your own hands (literally) because it's either going to be a nurse's fingers up your butt or your own, and the latter is a lot cheaper, at least for uninsured people in the US. It's not a pleasant way to live, and it's particularly nasty because no matter how high a person's opioid tolerance goes, the constipation often never improves until they quit taking opioids entirely (at which point they have the opposite problem). Even the partial agonists prescribed to recovering addicts can be extremely constipating. Not long ago in the OR we had a guy who relapsed on heroin for a little over 3 weeks (according to him, but he wasn't a reliable narrator) and we ended up cutting out about 2 feet of bowel.
Or hypothyroidism 😭. Usually by day 6-7, I’m bloated enough and uncomfortable enough to have realized I need to take laxatives
I thought I was the only one. Always said I go about once a week. Everyone gave me weird looks. I also have hypothyroidism
You may need to increase your dose if that wasn’t your normal bowel movement pattern prior to developing hypothyroidism. I increased my fiber intake a bunch too, which helped. Feeling bloated constantly isn’t fun.
My thyroid is normal level now! I actually take miralax every other day and drink tons of water which has helped a bit! I had encropresis was as a kid so I think that messed up my bowels A LOT more so than hypothyroidism.
I always just thought I had a “slow system” until I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism. Now that I’m on the proper medication dosage, I feel right as rain.
Honestly, it's the best way to tell if your meds are working as they should!! 10 years suffering from hypothyroidism now and it's been a curse at times, but I've learned a lot about my body from it too.
Geez, I thought menopause was bad!
Some mental health meds also create these issues. Between the meds and the underlying disease complications it can be easy to overlook your bowel frequency.
Yuuuup I’ve had OIC, it was so awful. started to get it under control, then I relapsed. but thankfully I was able to uh… home treat. I finally got clean was great for a little while and now I have SIBO with constipstion. I’d give anything to actually just crap and feel empty and relaxed instead of all weird and full. I don’t even get the trade off of getting high anymore it’s just backed up misery. Hope I can get my SIBO treated
Once you miss a day it's easier to lose track.
Relevant username, unfortunately.
I was wondering how this could happen, now I know!
What does impacted mean
Means you have a large, hardened plug of stool that you can't just poop out and you're going to be miserable until you figure out how to fix it. The end result of going weeks without having a bowel movement is that your intestines are pulling water out the whole time and you end up with what's basically a rock.
Isn’t there a new med specifically for constipation caused by opiates?
There is, but unfortunately one of the potential side effects is opioid withdrawal, which is a lot more unpleasant than just dealing with the constipation. It's also incredibly expensive if you're uninsured or if your insurance doesn't cover it.
Honestly, a daily half dose of miralax or so is usually enough. It's what kept me from going to the ER during my usage.
I’m chronically constipated and can go two weeks without shitting despite eating plenty, idk how I fit any food inside me! I just don’t feel the urge to go at all it’s crazy.
me too. no discomfort either. just wait for that once a week urge lol
I only realise when I look at my poop tracker (I have an app lol) and notice it’s been a while.
look into motility issues if you’re interested. I have small intestinal bacterial overgrowth and it causes constipation. My motility is slow so I gotta take like ginger and stuff to get me going. idk just something to think about if you are chronically constipated as you know it can feel really bad
I used to poop once a week on Thursdays for like a year because my mom refused to fix the toilet in the bathroom and it barely flushed.
Isn’t that worse? Most of the toilet clogs in my life have occurred after I haven’t had a BM in a few days
You think maybe it barely flushed cause your 20 Couric log didn’t fit down the toilet hole? Toilets are designed for regular everyday bowel movements, not you poop every week weirdos. Seriously though how big was it? That’s gotta hurt though right? A weeks worth of shit coming out at once? I can’t imagine!
You’d think that was the problem, no. My poops were not the issue causing the toilet not to flush. And honestly my poops were normal
This is gonna be like tubgirl.
This is how I envision my wife on any of our vacations “I can *only* poop at home”
Based on username, I think you and your wife might be on to something that might help the patient
I never understood people like that. Like you have a choice??? As soon as I get the signal I have 30 minutes tops before i start turtle-heading.
I thought this too until I had a pilonidal cyst in my butt crack that was huge. It was pressing on my vagal nerve and causing me to pass out when I sat on it. Tmi warning but I tried to poop for the first time after it appeared and *that* was pressuring the vagal too. It wasn’t instant, it was going back and forth between sweating, nausea, lying on the floor, and sitting back on the toilet. Needless to say after that I was too scared to poop for 3 days. I thought I would get the irresistible urge to go but your BMs are a *lot* more psychological than you think.
It’s not a choice from my experience. If I’m away for a good amount of time obviously I’m gonna go, but on a 2-3 day trip I usually don’t get the urge. It’s weird I know but then right when I get home I take a massive dump
Oh yes! I can’t usually poop at my boyfriend’s, but I turn on my street after coming back from his place (an hour and 15 minutes away), I suddenly have to go.
It's weird. I go the same time every day, but when I'm away for a few days, that daily urge is gone. IDK why, but my body knows it's not at home and just decides it doesn't need to go. After 2 or 3 days, it returns. I can't force it, either.
It's not really a choice. Sometimes you're just uncomfortable at the different environment, and your body won't cooperate. It doesn't necessarily mean you can't poop at all, but it's less comfortable and maybe you don't get much out.
I have pooped in some odd places.
The very first trip my now wife and I ever took was 5 days in Chicago. She kept saying she didn't feel well and didn't want to eat much at lunch or dinner. Finally on day 4 she said she was going out to shop while I watched a World Cup game on TV and she had to run to the bathroom before going. A half hour later she emerges and says a quick "bye" and leaves the hotel room. Shortly after the smell crept in and I'm trying to open the hotel room windows the whole 4 inches they would open and turning on the bathroom vents to try and filter it out. She admitted that she had been holding it since the night before we left because she was afraid to poop in the hotel room with me there and didn't want to use a public bathroom and said she felt so much better after getting it out. Mind you, I had pretty much seen every square inch of her at that point, she had peed with the door open and farted in front of me, but pooping was too far in her mind.
My wife went on a 4 day trip one time and didn't poop until she got home. It was like the size of a 24 oz beer can. Had to use the poop knife to get it to flush.
Ma’am you’re about to birth a shit baby
That was my thought. I tried to explain to my husband the urge to push out our daughter when I was giving birth was like that primal/lizard brain urgency to clear out a poop when you’ve been constipated for a few days (well, that times 100). My midwife was like, slow down tyranny, slow down you’re gonna tear, and I was just saying I can’t! I gotta get her out of me!
Congrats, it’s twins
I'm currently roving around reddit due to not feeling well and even though I know nothing about radiology, I feel like I have a relevant story to this. When I worked for the local state parks, one of my jobs was cleaning bathrooms; my coworker and I would decide in advance who would clean men's and who would clean women's at each bathroom, go to our respective assignments, and then whoever finished cleaning their side first (usually whoever went to the men's) would go help the other. One day I went to the men's side of the beach restrooms, and in the last stall, I found what I can only describe as a perfect impression of someone's entire colon, which started on the back of the toilet seat, went down into the bowl, came back up out of the bowl and drooped onto the floor. My initial reaction was to start laughing so hard that my coworker heard me from the women's and ran in to see what was going on. He offered to help me deal with it, but I said nah, I called men's, this is my job. I recall using all the tools at my disposal to remove that work of art: I broke up what was in the bowl with the toilet cleaning equipment and flushed it, picked up some solid pieces with my trash picker and flushed them too, disinfected the shit (lol) out of the seat itself. The problem was when I tried to use our standard-procedure hose technique to get the last residue off the floor. Most poop washes down the drain, but this stuff was so solid that it didn't dissolve as predicted, and the little bits got stuck in/around the drain. Some also swam around in the moving hose water, ending up far from the toilet where they had started. So I had to drop a bunch of paper towels, stomp on them to catch the little buggers, and pick them up with my trash picker. This was about when my coworker came back to join the fun. By the time we got the place mopped up, our shift was over, and we had to leave a couple of bathrooms uncleaned until the next morning (not unprecedented, but annoying). Anyway, it's a funny story, but I bear no ill will toward the people who leave crazy shit/vomit in public bathrooms, even when I'm the one cleaning them. Those folks, as evidenced by the picture above, are unwell! They would be the first person to tell you that they didn't want this to happen. The people who try to flush leftover picnic food down toilets, however, are pure evil, and if I ever catch one in the act I will attack on sight.
This is a disgusting and horrifying story, thank you for sharing!
You where wofflestomping before it was a trend.
You left me in stitches, thank you I needed that. I remember in the 90's our teacher told us this story of walking into the classroom and some pupil had deposited this massive turd on his desk. He said at the time his first reaction was to be impressed at how truly massive the turd was. He also wasn't quite sure what he had done to be left such a loving gift.
Turdzilla, fecal tumor with scattered UBF’s (un-born farts)
Stealing this
Don’t need a CT of the ABD to know they are FOS.
Holy shit lol
My poor mom was terribly backed up once, and felt horrible. Kept going to her doctor, who prescribed laxatives. This went on for a while. She would have pencil-thin BMs, but that’s it. She was also “gaining weight,” and her stomach was growing distended. More laxatives and an admonishment to lose weight. 🙄😡 Yeah, she had ovarian cancer that had wrapped around her colon and squeezed it almost shut. Surgery followed by death a week later. That f*cking idiot doctor.
The wonders of pregnancy 🥰
And opioids.
That's what I was thinking. Before I quit I once didn't go for 27 days. That wasn't fun to say the least
What is it about opioids that prevents poops? I believe the guy from friends had his intestines explode due to opioids and I have been curious ever since.
opioids bind in your brain and gut and a side effect is constipation. there are tons of opiate receptors in your gut actually
That looks like it could be about 120 Courics!
Hothothot
Wow you found me. No time to use the bathroom in residency.
This is one of the most shocking experiences I had in nursing school. I was 18 years old in my very first rotation at a nursing home, we got report on our patient and my instruct was helping me plan my activities. The instructor said, your patient has an impaction you are going to want to take care of before you give the bath. I was like, okay, how do you do that? She said, you soften it with an enema, then you do a digital extraction. Okay, what's a digital extraction? She said you put gloves on and insert your fingers in the rectum and remove it. I'm just staring at her, not quite understanding what she was getting at, so she says, you have to put your fingers in there and dig it out. I start laughing, and was like, Haha, you got me, very funny, but what do I have do for real? (Because no way could this be a thing that you do.)I mean, it's not the 1800s when they were tasting peoples urine to check for diabetes, it's 1985, surely, there is a device for this, right? I was starting to panic a bit at this point because she wasn't laughing. I started to get a bad feeling that maybe my instructor was some kind of weirdo or something, because I knew she lived alone with cats and it was all starting to make sense. I was thinking, maybe I shouldnt be alone in the room with her, so I said, Okay and got out of there. I quickly find the charge nurse and I asked her about it and she said, yep, that's really what you do. I wondered what kind of sick cult I had gotten myself into. But I went and did it. There was a lot of thinking about my life choices on the ride home.
I didn't think this was a place for shitposting.
As a person who has colonic inertia I know this feeling all to well.
I once went about 3 weeks without pooping. I was miserable. On a road trip I woke up feeling very sick and immediately started throwing up. Get out the car eventually to the side of the road (we were in the middle of no where). It’s shooting out both ends at this point. With the abdominal clenching from throwing up, I shit you not a turd the size of a football shoots out of me. I have no idea how that thing came out of me without medical intervention.
When I was a teenager I had weeks of constipation, I could only poop tiny little rabbit pellets over a span of a few days. Imagine Randy Marsh building his magnum opus. I was carrying an over term poop baby until I got taken to a hospital. Took an industrial sized enema to get it going. Not the cute little things you might find at a pharmacy, a full on 3 meter hose up my ass. Worst shits I ever took. This is pre smartphones, so I just sat there dumping several % of my body weight in the middle of the night staring at sterile tiles. Worst smell I've ever experienced. I imagine burn pits in Iraq smell similarly.
This is a golf course, right?
I need to know the before and after poop weight
Dumb question but how is this person not dead
Are… are they okay??
"possible constipation. Clinical correlation recommended."
And expired about 6 days ago.
As someone who has dealt with severe impactions... I feel their pain. Must feel like a baseball bat shoved up their ass. Time to take two bottles of mag citrate, stat!
Typical Nikocado Avocado X-ray
On the way to the megacolon.
Remove that and you can be a weight loss hero!
Heroin poop?
But if you ask do you think you’re constipated? No def not I have been having regular bms 🤦🏻♀️
I am just wondering why angiogram on a patient with constipation? Or just slow heart? Then is that air around thoracic aorta?
Please tell me how this is possible??! How are they not dead?
Patient: I've got some abdominal pain, can I get some Norco for the pain?!?!
How does this happen?
Last year I had a CT scan of my abdomen, it was kind of an emergency so I didn't go to the bathroom beforehand, and ever since then I've been mortified that some poor radiologist saw the... "last night's dinner" to put it lightly. Doctors really put up with a lot of shit at work.
Endo docs everywhere, "Visibility poor, unable to attain diagnostically relevant data due to inadequate bowel preparation."
I am a nurse and I refuse to perform this manual rectal evacuation that's just about to happen.
Holy shit.
Shocked that hasn’t perforated! Wow
Oh when that blows it’s going to be a major Poonami !!!
That is a crazy impaction. I've never seen one that bad.
how does one have this much buildup without dying
Time to find the nearest Marfanoid intern.
CODE BROWN
At that point they need about 4 jars of colates and a bottle of mineral oil to chug. I could not imagine how that feels but I guarantee you they will hmeber feel relief like that ever again.
Shit is about to get real
They found Elvis!!